Lizzie Siddal: The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel: Lucinda Hawksley: 9780233002583: Amazon.com: Books Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly This book traces the life of Lizzie Siddal, who, from her humble beginnings as a shop girl, became a central figure of the Pre-Raphaelite movement by the time she died at 32 from a self-inflicted overdose of opiates. Today, readers are used to stories of small-town hopefuls using modeling as a springboard to wider artistic success (think Marilyn Monroe or Andie MacDowell), but Siddal, Hawksley claims, was the first. As a model and then an artist in her own right, this remarkable woman crossed paths with some of Victorian England's greatest artistic luminaries, appearing in masterworks by Walter Deverell, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and supported by Ford Madox Brown and John Ruskin. Hawksley recounts Siddal's life in exhilarating and painful detail, providing a glimpse of the internal and external forces that contributed to her self-destruction.

Because direct evidence is scant-few of Siddal's letters or prose writings survive-scholars have inferred a great deal from the words of others and Siddal's own paintings. In doing so, Hawksley sometimes overreaches, coming across less like a biographer than a conjectural psycholoanalyst; on the whole, however, her work on this important figure is solid, lively and lucid. Scholars of the period will find the book of great interest, as will those wishing to learn more about women in the Victorian art world or about the Pre-Raphaelites in general. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition. Ophelia – LizzieSiddal.com Exploring Elizabeth Siddal Ophelia Ophelia, painted by Sir John Everett Millais in 1851-2, is one of the most famous images of Elizabeth Siddal. Due to Millais’ beautiful and intricate image, she has become so associated with the character of Ophelia that perhaps we now treat her as if she is Ophelia.

It is hard not to draw parallels: the golden Pre-Raphaelite Stunner falling prey to illness as she becomes Ophelia. Ophelia loses her father, Lizzie her stillborn child. Ophelia, overwhelmed with grief and madness, sings strange songs while those around her seem unsure of what to do. Lizzie rocks an empty cradle, urging others to be quiet so as not to wake the baby that is not there. Ophelia drowns, Lizzie overdoses. Finally, Hamlet leaps into Ophelia’s grave. Rossetti exhumes Lizzie’s grave. It’s all so deliciously Shakespearean. But, I’d like to set the subject of Lizzie aside and look at the painting itself. I can think of no better source than The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, published in 1899 by his son: The text below is transcribed from Volume I of The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais: Miss Siddal had a trying experience whilst acting as a model for “Ophelia”.

In order that the artist might get the proper set of the garments in water and the right atmosphere and aqueous effects, she had to lie in a large bath filled with water, which was kept at an even temperature by lamps placed beneath. One day, just as the picture was nearly finished, the lamps went out unnoticed by the artist, who was so intensely absorbed in his work that he thought of nothing else, and the poor lady was kept floating in the cold water till she was quite benumbed. She herself never complained of this, but the result was that she contracted a severe cold, and her father (an auctioneer at Oxford) wrote to Millais, threatening him with an action for £50 damages for his carelessness. Eventually the matter was satisfactorily compromised. Millais paid the doctor’s bill; and Miss Siddal, quickly recovering, was none the worse for her cold bath. D.G. Rossetti had already fallen in love with her, struck with her “unworldy simplicity and purity of aspect” –qualities which, as those who knew her bear witness, Millais succeeded in conveying to the canvas — but it was not until 1860 that they married.

“Ophelia” in later years About the year 1873, “Ophelia” was exhibited at South Kensington; and Millais, going one day to have a look at it noticed at once that several of the colours he had used in 1851 had gone wrong — notably the vivid green in the water-weed and the colouring of the face of the figure. He therefore had the picture back in his studio, and in a short time made it bloom again, as we see it to-day, as great triumphs of his Pre-Raphaelite days. The colour, substance, and surface of his pictures have remained as perfect as the day they were put on. Perhaps the greatest compliment ever paid to “Ophelia” as regards to its truthfulness to Nature , is the fact that a certain Professor of Botony, being unable to take his class into the country and lecture from the objects before him, took them to the Guildhall, where this work was being exhibited, and discoursed to them upon the flowers and plants before them, which were, he said, as instructive as Nature herself. Mr. Spielman is enthusiastic in his praise of the picture.

He speaks of it as “one of the greatest of Millais’ conceptions, as well as one of the most marvellously and completely accurate and elaborate studies of Nature ever made by the hand of man….The robin whistles on the branch, while the distraught Ophelia sings her own death-dirge, just as she sinks beneath the water with eyes wide open, unconscious of the danger and all else. It is one of the proofs of the greatness of this picture that, despite all elaboration, less worthy still superb of execution, the brilliancy of colour, diligence of microscopic research, and masterly handling, it is Ophelia’s face that holds the spectator, rivets his attention, and stirs emotion.” The picture passed successively through the hands of Mr. Farrer, Mr. B. Windus, and Mr. Fuller Maitland, before it came into the possession of Mr. Henry Tate, to whose generosity the public are indebted for its addition to the National Gallery of Art. It was exceedingly well engraved by Mr. I. Stevenson in 1866.

In the 1852 Exhibition, when both the “Ophelia” and “The Huguenot” were exhibited, there was another beautiful “Ophelia” by Millais’ friend, Arthur Hughes, who is good enough to send me the following note about the two pictures: “One of the nicest things that I remember is connected with an “Ophelia” I painted, that was exhibited in the Academy at the same time as his [Millais’] own most beautiful and wonderful picture of that subject. Mine met its fate high up in the little octagon room*; but on the morning of the varnishing, as I was going through the first room, before I knew where I was, Millais met me, saying, ‘Aren’t you he they call Cherry?’ (my name in the school). I said I was. Then he said he had just been up a ladder looking at my picture, there, but adding also very truly that I had not painted the right kind of stream.

He had just passed out of the Schools when I began in them, and I had a most enormous admiration for him, and he always looked so beautiful — tall, slender, but strong, crowned with an ideal head, and (as Rossetti said) ‘with the face of an angel’. He could not have done a kinder thing, for he knew I should be disappointed at the place my picture had.” *Commonly known to artists as “The Condemned Cell” —– NOTE: The text above refers to Lizzie’s father as an auctioneer in Oxford. There have been several different descriptions of Charles Siddall’s occupation, but I believe him to have been a cutler, as described in both Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood by Jan Marsh and Lizzie Siddal: Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel by Lucinda Hawksley. 10 Thoughts.

Lizzie Siddal: Victorian model's tragic story on stage - BBC News BBC News Lizzie Siddal: Victorian model's tragic story on stage By Tim Masters Entertainment correspondent, BBC News 12 November 2013 Close share panel Image caption Emma West as Lizzie Siddal In 1849, Lizzie Siddal was plucked from obscurity to pose for some of the best-known painters of the Victorian art world. Now her tragic life story is being brought to the stage for the first time. Elizabeth Siddal has been described by one biographer as a "Pre-Raphaelite supermodel" . The most well-known story about her time as a painter's subject is when she almost died while posing in a bathtub for Sir John Everett Millais as he painted his drowning Ophelia in 1852. It was just one extraordinary incident in Siddal's short life - she died aged 32 - which features in a new play that premieres in London this month.

Millais and the Pre-Raphaelites Born in 1829, John Everett Millais was a pioneering British painter A child prodigy, at 11 he was the youngest ever student to enter the prestigious Royal Academy Schools "We were genuinely surprised that no-one had done it [on stage] before, because it seems like such a gift of a story," says actress Emma West, who plays the lead role in Lizzie Siddal. The Siddal story was most recently told on TV in BBC Two's Desperate Romantics in 2009. At the rehearsal space in south London, where the new play is taking shape, all eyes are drawn to the full-size reproduction of the Millais painting propped against the wall - with Ophelia singing as she sinks to a watery grave. The scene, described in Shakespeare's Hamlet, is one of the best-known works of Pre-Raphaelite art and is the most popular postcard sold by the Tate, which has the original in its permanent collection. "It's one of those paintings you can't tire of looking at - it is so vibrant and lifelike," says West.

With her red hair and pale complexion, the actress looks uncannily like the tragic figure in the picture. Indeed, she recalls how on the two occasions she has visited the Tate to see the work, complete strangers have asked her to pose in front of it. Image caption Lizzie Siddal posed for Millais' Ophelia (1851-2) in a bath full of water in his studio "The last time it was a couple of Japanese tourists who were quite freaked out [by the resemblance], it seemed to me." So who was Lizzie Siddal? Born in 1829, she was aged around 20 and working in a hat shop when she was "discovered" by artist Walter Deverell. She soon became a favourite model for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood - the group of young painters who wanted to revolutionise the Victorian art world. Over a period of several months, she posed for Millais' Ophelia in a bath full of water kept warm by lamps placed underneath. The lamps went out on one occasion and the water turned ice cold, although Siddal did not complain. Millais was so absorbed in his work and did not notice.

Siddal fell ill, and her father threatened the artist with legal action until he agreed to pay the medical fees. Siddal also became an artist in her own right, although painting was an unusual career for a woman in those days. She became the muse of the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and appeared in many of his works. After a long and turbulent engagement, they married in 1860, but a year afterwards Siddal had a stillborn daughter. Suffering depression and addicted to laudanum, Siddal died in February 1862. "The more you read about her the more fascinating she becomes," says playwright Jeremy Green. "Here's a woman who, with no advantages, became famous as a model; but that wasn't sufficient, she wanted to produce art and, falling in love, she wanted to be fulfilled in her love - and in pursuit of both she met tragic consequences.

"It's a play about love and death and immortality." Image caption Emma West as Lizzie and Tom Bateman as Dante Gabriel Rossetti in rehearsals for Lizzie Siddal The idea for the play, directed by Lotte Wakeham, goes back two years when Green wrote a short film, Ophelia, about the Millais "bathtub" incident. Emma West, who played Siddal in the film too, got a taste of what the Victorian model went through in Millais' studio. "I had the experience of lying in the bath - the longest I did was five or six hours," she recalls. "That's a helpful thing to have done, despite the fact that my fingers were prune-like. The crew were scooping cold water out and pouring in hot water so I was fine." West adds: "It's tempting to think, 'How cruel of Millais', but actually there was nothing to stop Lizzie saying, 'It's getting a bit cold now'. But she didn't. "She chose to try and be the perfect model for him.

That's a fantastic clue to her psychology, because what made her attractive to these painters is that she did have a sense of understanding of what they were trying to achieve." As well as seeing the Ophelia painting at the Tate, West also visited Lizzie Siddal's grave in the Rossetti family plot in London's Highgate Cemetery. She was told by the cemetery guide that it is a place of pilgrimage for Lizzie Siddal devotees. "It's predominantly men, who get far more emotional than the women do!" What were her emotions standing at the grave? "I feel a sense of responsibility. When I knew we were going to tell her story I felt I should pay my respects in some way, just to say, 'We're taking this seriously and I hope we do you justice.'" West, meanwhile, describes Siddal as "a trailblazer". "She would dress differently and people would mock her sometimes and she didn't care. She was genuinely nourished by the art. "She was the genuine article." Lizzie Siddal is at the Arcola Theatre, London E8, from 20 November - 21 December 2013.

What Millais went through in order to paint Ophelia | Art | Agenda | Phaidon What Millais went through in order to paint Ophelia What Millais went through in order to paint Ophelia As Ophelia returns to the Tate today, our Millais author Jason Rosenfeld tells us how the painter spent eleven hour days fighting off bulls, swans and 'muscular' flies in order to realise the most recognisable painting ever created Ophelia, 1851-2 - John Everett Millais SHARE THIS PAGE Co-curator of Tate show Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-garde and author of John Everett Millais explains why the Pre-Raphs were like The YBAs, how they connect to contemporary art and why Millais was 'a bit McCartney' Article Tools A · A While we love it when great works of art go on tour, allowing everyone to get a chance to see them in their pristine glory, we must say we were happy to hear that major Pre-Raphaelite works including John Everett Millais’s Ophelia and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The Beloved are back on display from this morning (Friday 8 August) at Tate Britain, alongside other key works from the Pre-R

aphaelite movement after a world tour which was seen by over a million people.

Millais’s Ophelia was obviously one of the founding works in Tate’s collection and has long been one of the UK’s most loved paintings - it regularly flip-flops between the best and second best-selling postcards in the museum's shop. The story behind how Millais painted it is a good one. Depicting the drowning Ophelia from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, the painting was regarded in its day as one of the most accurate and elaborate studies of nature ever made. The background was painted from life on the bank of the Hogsmill River in Surrey and the model was Elizabeth Siddall who posed for the painting in a bath of water kept warm by lamps underneath. The painting was made in the summer of 1851 after Millais had travelled to Surrey with fellow pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt. Show curator and Millais author Jason Rosenfeld takes up the story: "To paint the picture Millais adopted the precision of his practice the summer before, working long hours on the Hogsmill River near Ewell, two miles from his lodgings.

Millais was working eleven hour days, fending off 'muscular' flies, sitting under an inadequate umbrella, threatened by a bull in an adjacent field, buffeted by whipping winds and at the mercy of two swans who persisted in positioning themselves in his work spot or eating the water weeds he was attempting to paint on the left side of the canvas.These were the lengths that the true Pre-Raphaelite went to in order to paint the truth of nature!" John Everett Millais It's worth noting that, somewhat astonishingly, although it's Millais's most recognised picture, Ophelia was met with a mixed reaction on its first showing in London as Rosenfeld notes. "While more advanced critics were able to rectify the challenging combination of precise detail of nature with the pathos on the heroine's face, while conservative, establishment writers saw it as needlessly morose and threatening, and not Romantic in tone." Whatever the case, themes of women and extreme states of mind would continue to obsess Millais for the rest of his career. The painting is back on show alongside Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Beata Beatrix, Ford Madox Brown’s Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet and William Holman Hunt’s The Awakening Conscience among others.

If you can't make it to the Tate Britain there are still a few copies left of Jason Rosenfeld's peerless book on Millais and his place within the Pre-Raphaelite movement here. Check it out here . SHARE THIS PAGE Ten things you never knew about Ophelia - Telegraph Art Ten things you never knew about Ophelia As John Everett Millais' Ophelia returns to Tate Britain, Benjamin Secher reveals the roles played by a tin bath and a deformed vole in the birth of Britain’s favourite painting Ophelia (1851-2) by John Everett Millais Photo: © Tate Follow Ophelia, John Everett Millais’s bewitching depiction of Hamlet’s sweetheart sinking to a watery death, is one of the most familiar images in art . It has adorned the walls of the Tate for most of the 117 years since the gallery opened, attracting millions of viewers to admire its forensic detail – and buy the postcard, which remains a runaway bestseller in the gallery shop. As it goes back on display at Tate Britain following an international tour, here’s an alternative guide to some of the lesser known facts about Britain's favourite painting.

1 Millais suffered for his art After identifying a suitably bucolic setting for his picture, Millais perched at his easel on the banks of the Hogsmill River in Surrey for up to 11 hours a day, six days a week throughout a five-month period in 1851. He was determined to capture with unprecedented accuracy the natural scene before his eyes – but such devotion to his art came at a cost. “The flies of Surrey are more muscular, and have a still greater propensity for probing human flesh,” he grumbled in a letter to a friend. “I am threatened with a notice to appear before a magistrate for trespassing in a field and destroying the hay… and am also in danger of being blown by the wind into the water. Certainly the painting of a picture under such circumstances would be greater punishment to a murderer than hanging.” 2 Desperate times called for desperate measures When November 1851 brought bitter winds and snow to the Surrey countryside, Millais decided he needed some kind of shelter and oversaw the building of a peculiar hut “made of four hurdles, like a sentry-box, covered outside with straw”.

Sitting in it, with his paints (probably stored in pig bladder cases – collapsible tubes had only recently been invented and were still scarce) and with stray pieces of straw whistling around his ears, he felt, he said, like Robinson Crusoe. His friend and fellow Pre-Raphaelite artist, William Holman Hunt, who was simultaneously painting his own great work The Hireling Shepherd a little along the river, was so taken with Millais’s hut that he had an identical structure built for himself. Related Articles 30 Jun 2010 3 An animal vanished during the making of this picture At an early stage, Millais included a water vole (which an assistant had fished out of the Hogsmill) in his composition, gently paddling alongside the stricken Ophelia. In December 1851, Millais showed the uncompleted painting to relatives of Hunt. “Hunt’s uncle and aunt came, both of whom understood most gratifyingly every object except my water rat,” he notes in a diary entry of the time. “The male relation, when invited to guess at it, eagerly pronounced it to be a hare.

Perceiving by our smiles that he had made a mistake, a rabbit was next hazarded. After which I have a faint recollection of a dog or a cat being mentioned”. By the time the painting was unveiled at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1852, the rogue rodent had vanished, although a rough sketch of it can still be found, tucked away in an upper corner of the canvas now concealed by the frame. 4 Ophelia caught a cold Determined to depict Shakespeare’s waterlogged maiden with utmost accuracy, but recognising that the chances of persuading someone to pose in the freezing Hogsmill were distinctly slim, Millais came up with the wheeze of getting his model – the 19-year-old Elizabeth Siddall, future wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti – to lie, fully clothed, in a full bathtub. Oil lamps were placed underneath the tub to keep the water warm, but when they went out the artist was too engrossed in his work to notice. Lying deathly still in chilly water for hours on end left Siddall with a stinking cold, and Millais with a £50 doctor’s bill.

5 Not everybody fell for Ophelia’s charms When the painting made its public debut at the Royal Academy in London in 1852, the critics were far from unanimous in their praise. The Times declared that “there must be something strangely perverse in the imagination which sources Ophelia in a weedy ditch, and robs the drowning struggle of that love-lorn maiden of all pathos and beauty”. Another newspaper objected that “Mr Millais’s Ophelia in her pool… makes us think of a dairymaid in a frolic." And even John Ruskin, a great supporter of Millais, was not altogether kind.

Although he found the technique of the painting to be “exquisite”, he expressed grave doubts about Millais’s decision to set it in a Surrey landscape: “Why the mischief should you not paint pure nature,” he asked, “and not that rascally wirefenced garden-rolled-nursery-maid’s paradise?” 6 In the 20th century, Salvador Dalí emerged as a surprise champion of the picture “How could Salvador Dalí fail to be dazzled by the flagrant surrealism of English Pre-Raphaelitism,” wrote the great surrealist in an article published in a 1936 journal, alongside a reproduction of Ophelia. “The Pre-Raphaelite painters bring us radiant women who are, at the same time, the most desirable and most frightening that exist.” 7 Ophelia is big in Japan The painting has enjoyed something of a cult following in the Far East since it was immortalised as “a thing of considerable beauty” in a novel by the renowned Japanese novelist Natsume Soseki in 1906.

When it travelled to Tokyo in 2008 as part of a Millais exhibition, the Japanese decided not to use the image of Ophelia on promotional posters for fear that its romantic power would inspire young women to take their own lives. 8 Millais sold the painting for 300 guineas Ophelia was bought from the artist on Dec 10, 1851 by art dealer Mr Henry Farrer for 300 guineas. He sold it on to a keen Pre-Raphaelite collector called Mr BG Windus, who then sold it in 1862 for 748 guineas. Millais’s work has continued to increase in value at a phenomenal pace ever since. Last year, his 1868 painting Sisters sold at auction for a record £2.3 million. Experts estimate that the current value of Ophelia is at least £30 million. 9 The artist didn’t always seem destined for greatness Millais’s educational career got off to an inauspicious start when, at the age of four, he was expelled from nursery, after just three days, for biting his teacher’s hand.

Seven years later he redeemed himself – and put his career back on track – by becoming the youngest pupil ever admitted to the Royal Academy school, where he earned the nickname “the child”. In 1885, he became the first artist to become a baronet and by the following year he was exploiting the commercial aspect of his work to earn the modern equivalent of nearly £2 million a year. 10 The building where Ophelia was painted still stands Millais’s studio was on the second floor at 7 Gower Street in London, just around the corner from the British Museum. A blue plaque today identifies the building as the place where “The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in 1848”. But other than that, little evidence remains of its key role in the creation of the nation’s favourite picture. The building is now occupied by an oil and gas exploration company. The famous bathtub has been replaced by a photocopier. Ophelia (1851-52) by John Everett Millais is on permanent display at Tate Britain, London SW1.

Details: 020 7887 8888; tate.org.uk Who Where the Pre-Raphaelite Artist's Models Who Where the Pre-Raphaelite Artist's Models Updated on April 12, 2014 Sisterhood of the Pre-Raphaelites, the women in the pictures If ever there was an art style that was branded then it has to be the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Its use of gorgeous, languid female sitters with cascading, locks, elegant necks and dreamy eyes are synonymous with the movement’s paintings of Celtic myths, Greek tragedies and Biblical epics. These mid-nineteenth century women, were the supermodels of their age, the perfect image of Victorian womanhood in tragic, demure and romantic poses. But who were these Egyptian princesses, Roman Goddesses and Arthurian damsels? Like the WAGS (wives and girlfriends) of many of today’s sporting stars these women were unremarkable, from ordinary working class backgrounds, domestics, serving in shops, and bars. Their looks and demeanor though were captured by the great artists of the day and together they were responsible for engendering the style and grace found in the Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

Twelfth Night Lizzie Elizabeth “Lizzie” Siddall Born 1829 in Hatton Garden, her father had a cutlery business and at an early age the family moved to Southwark. Lizzie’s mother taught her to read and write and she developed a love of poetry. Walter Deverell first noticed Lizzie as she worked in a Milliners shop and he approached her to model for him. It was then that she met Dante Gabrielle Rossetti one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelites and for a while she worked exclusively as Rossetti’s model and muse. They would eventually marry and Siddall sadly died not long after losing her baby prematurely, and subsequently accidentally overdosing on laudanum in 1862 aged 33. The grief stricken Rossetti buried all his poems, he had written with her but seven years later he decided to exhume the body, to retrieve and publish them. It was said that Lizzie body was the same as the day she was buried, except for her hair, which had continued to grow and now filled the coffin.

Dante’s brother, William described Lizzie as tall, finely formed with a lofty neck and a lavish, heavy wealth of coppery golden hair. Paintings featuring Elizabeth Siddall Twelfth Night 1850, Walter Deverell Ophelia 1852, Sir John Everett Millais Beata Beatrix 1863, Dante Gabrielle Rossetti (completed a year after her death) Guinevere Lizzie Siddall Jane Morris Nee Burden The daughter of a Stableman in Oxford, Jane Morris was born in 1839. Noticed by Dante Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones whilst attending a play, they persuaded her to model for an Arthurian mural they had been commissioned to paint. Through the pair she met and eventually married William Morris and had two daughters, Jenny and May, who can also be found amongst the paintings of the group. Jane became the object of obsession for Dante Rossetti and featured in many of his paintings after the death of his wife. He and Jane also embarked on a secret love affair that lasted many years until his death in 1882.

Jane Morris lived until 1914 and died in Bath Paintings featuring Jane Morris Queen Guinevere 1858, William Morris The Blue Silk Dress 1868, Dante Rossetti Persephone 1874, Dante Rossetti Christ Church Stained Glass Window, Oxford, Edward Burne-Jones Bocca Baciata Fair Rosemund Fanny Cornforth aka Sara Cox Fanny was a housemaid who became a model and lover of Dante Rossetti, born Sara Cox in 1835, Steyning, Surrey. She later took the name of her first husband’s stepfather, Cornforth and married for a second time in 1860 to a Timothy Hughes as a response to Rossetti own marriage to Lizzie Siddall. After the death of Lizzie Siddall, Cornforth moved into Rossetti’s house as a housemaid but was also his lover at the same time. Her course accent, Ginger tresses and fuller figure attracted cruel comments from his friends and family but they remained close for the whole of his life. It is not certain when she died but was known to be suffering with dementia in 1905.

Paintings featuring Fanny Cornforth Bocca Bacciata 1859, Dante Rossetti Sidonia von Bork 1860, Edward Burne-Jones Lucrezia Borgia 1861, Dante Rossetti Fair Rosamund 1861, Dante Rossetti Helen of Troy 1863, Dante Rossetti Maria Zambaco The Three Graces Maria Zambaco nee Kassavetti Maria was a wealthy, Greek heiress born in 1848. After a short failed marriage with Dr Zambaco she moved in with her mother in London and met Edward Burne-Jones who feel in love with her uncommonly beauty and asked her to model for him. The had an affair together, which became the scandal of society, when it was discovered by Burne-Jones’s wife and she threatened to commit suicide he ended it. Burne-Jones though remained obsessed with her always painting her as a temptress or witch. Along with her cousin Maria Stillmann, Zambaco was also an accomplished painter and sculptor in her own right and produced a number of well-received artworks within the Pre-Raphaelite style.

Paintings featuring Zambaco The Tree of Forgiveness 1882, Burne-Jones The Beguiling of Merlin 1874, Burne-Jones Marie Stillmann Nee Spartali Marie was born in London, the daughter of a Greek Merchant and Consulate official. She is renowned as one of the Pre-Raphaelite models and as an accomplished artist within the movement. Her cousin Marie Zambaco was also famous as a model and painter too. Marie was a tall woman, with long dark, wavy hair, and dark, piercing eyes. Rossetti described her as one of his most intellectual models. Stillmann studied under Ford Madox-Brown and modelled for Burne-Jones, Rossetti and Whistler, while the subjects of her own work were typical Pre-Raphaelite, Shakespeare, Dante Angliari, and Italian landscapes. She died in 1927 aged 84 and is interred in the family tomb at West Norwood Cemetery.

The London Times obituary describes her “legendary beauty is imperfectly preserved in Dante Rossetti’s paintings.” Paintings featuring Stillmann The Mill 1882, Burne-Jones (features the three graces, Stillmann, Zamabco and Coronio) The Bower Meadow 1872, Rossetti (along with Alexa Wilding and May Morris) Fiammetta 1878, Rossetti The Pre-Raphaelite Damsels Annie Miller 1835 – 1925, another of the working class women was working behind a bar when discovered by William Hunt becoming his model and lover, Miller was also painted by Dante Rossetti but this caused trouble between the two artists. Paintings featuring Miller Woman in Yellow 1863, Rossetti Alexa “Alice” Wilding Alexa met Rossetti in the spring of 1865 by accident as he walked to the Arundel Club, struck by her beauty he asked her to model for him. Alexa didn’t keep their first appointment but at a second meeting he managed to persuade her to become his model.

Wilding was described as having “a lovely face, beautifully moulded in every feature, full of quiescent, soft, mystical repose.” Paintings featuring Wilding The Blessed Damozel 1875, Rossetti (May Morris the left-hand angel) Lady Lilith 1868, Rossetti (two versions exist, the other with Cornforth) The Bower Meadow 1872, Rossetti The Loving Cup 1867, Rossetti Venus 1864-68, Rossetti Effie Gray Ruskin – Millais Euphemia was born in 1828 in Perth, Scotland and grow up in the house where Ruskin’s grandfather committed suicide. She was encouraged to marry art critic John Ruskin but with great Victorian scandal she had the marriage annulled after five years due to the fact it had not been consummated, and married the painter John Everett Millais.

Paintings featuring Gray The Order of Release 1853, Millais Waiting 1854, Millais (arguments over whether it is Gray or Miller as the model) Emma Watkins William Hunt and John Everett Millais spent the summer and autumn of 1851 painting landscapes around Ewell Castle as backgrounds for their latest paintings. After one session the two were talking to the local girls and persuaded Emma Watkins to return to London with them as the model for “The Hireling Shepherd.” After completing the painting Watkins decided modelling and London life was not for her and returned home to marry a young sailor. Paintings featuring Watkins Famous paintings of Ophelia by Millais, Waterhouse and other artists Famous paintings of Ophelia by Millais, Waterhouse and other artists Updated on August 2, 2012 Ophelia by John Everett Millais, 1851-52 Image courtesy of Wiki Commons Millais's Pre-Raphaelite Ophelia - Lizzie Siddall modelled in a bathtub The Pre-Raphaelite artists of Victorian England painted many Shakespearian characters, but Ophelia was a particular favourite.

The sad death by drowning of Hamlet's sweetheart has captured the imagination of numerous artists, but John Everett Millais' well-known painting of a pale, red-haired Ophelia floating in still, dark water, surrounded by overhanging greenery, and a drifting posy of flowers, is surely the most famous of these images. John Millais was a founder member of a group of Victorian artists known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was dedicated to producing a fresh and naturalistic realism in his art, and had a very good eye for detail. Millais planned his painting of Ophelia with meticulous care, beginning with the background, which he painted directly from a section of the Hogsmill River in Ewell, Surrey. The laborious task of faithfully recording every bud, every leaf, and every blade of grass took Millais a solid five months of work. He sat painting on the riverbank for up to eleven hours a day, six days a week, and as the summer of 1851 wore on into autumn, and the weather began to turn against him, he had a little hut erected to shelter him from the rain and wind while he worked.

The second stage of Ophelia was completed in Millais' studio at 7 Gower Street in London. Nineteen year old Elizabeth Siddal agreed to model for the painting, and she was made to lie fully clothed in a full bathtub in the studio. By now it was winter, and Millais was obliged to place oil lamps under the tub to warm the water. Unfortunately, however, he soon became so engrossed in his work that he failed to notice when they went out. As a result, Siddal caught a severe cold, and her angry father sent Millais a letter demanding £50 for medical expenses, though eventually a lower sum was agreed. The flowers shown floating on the river correspond with Shakespeare's description of Ophelia's garland. T"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts," said Ophelia to her brother Laertes. "There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for you, and here's some for me; we may call it herb of grace o' Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy.

I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died." The flowers illustrated also reflect the Victorian interest in the "language of flowers", which suggests that each bloom has a symbolic meaning. Millais has included red poppies in his painting, although these are not mentioned in Shakespeare's description, and the poppy represents sleep and death. Ironically, the model, Lizzie Siddal later died tragically of a laudanum overdose. Laudanum is derived from the opium poppy. Detail from Ophelia by John Everett Millais Image courtesy of Wiki Commons Ophelia by John William Waterhouse, 1894 Oil on canvas. Image courtesy of Wiki Commons Ophelia by John William Waterhouse John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) painted many large canvases in a Pre-Raphaelite style. He was particularly fond of subjects from literature, especially beautiful, tragic heroines. The character of Ophelia greatly appealed to him, and he was to paint her four times. A fifth planned painting was never completed due to ill-health.

In Shakespeare's play, 'Hamlet', Ophelia is the daughter of Polonius, and sister to Laertes. She has been Hamlet's sweetheart, but he rejects her love, and subsequently kills her father. These actions profoundly affect Ophelia and unbalance her mind. Her mad scene (act IV, scene 5) is one of the best known in Western literature. In Waterhouse's painting shown above, Ophelia is decorating her hair with a garland, and there are more flowers and herbs in her lap. She is shown sitting on a bent over willow on the banks of a brook, and we know that this is where she will meet her fate. Ophelia by Arthur Hughes, 1851-53 Oil on panel. Image courtesy of Wiki Commons Ophelia by Arthur Hughes Arthur Hughes (1832-1915) completed his version of Ophelia in 1853 when he was only 21 years old. Hughes' Ophelia is a fragile, pale creature seated on the bent over trunk of a willow, contemplating the waters at her feet.

Her hair is garlanded, and she is holding an armful of greenery. Hughes has painted his heroine with such delicacy. Her skin is almost luminous, and her expression is unbearably sad. The painting has been completed on panel, and the golden arch that frames it, is inscribed with words from Shakespeare's play, 'Hamlet', Act 4 Scene 7; There is a willow grows aslant a brook That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream There with fantastic garlands did she make Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples Pre-Raphaelites return home to Tate Britain after world tour | Art and design | The Guardian The pre-Raphaelites Pre-Raphaelites return home to Tate Britain after world tour Ophelia by John Everett Millais and other popular works from permanent collection back on Tate walls after two years away Tate Britain staff rehang John Everett Millais's Ophelia among its pre-Raphaelite brethren.

Photograph: Copyright Sarah Lee for the Guardian Thursday 7 August 2014 12.36 EDT First published on Thursday 7 August 2014 12.36 EDT Share on Messenger Close One of the Tate's best-loved paintings, Ophelia by John Everett Millais, has returned to its gallery after a world tour with other gems from the pre-Raphaelite collection. The paintings, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti's glowing Beata Beatrix, Ford Madox Brown's Jesus Washing Peter's Feet, and William Holman Hunt's The Awakening Conscience have been on tour in the US, Russia, Japan – where a poster of Ophelia was once banned in case it encouraged young girls to emulate her suicide – and Italy, where they were seen by more than 1.1 million people. The exhibition, stage at Tate Britain in 2012, celebrated the works of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, members of which saw themselves as returning to the colour and truth of medieval art. Although they were often sneered at by the critics in their day and by those since, their paintings have always been among the most popular works in the gallery.

Ophelia was part of the founding collection of the gallery, presented by the sugar millionaire Sir Henry Tate in 1894, and has always been among its top 10 best-selling postcards. Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain, said: "It has been fascinating to see how popular the pre-Raphaelites have been in different international contexts and how they resonate with other cultures. It is great to welcome them back and to be able to integrate them into our permanent displays again." The Millais painting shows Ophelia drowning, as described in Shakespeare's Hamlet: "Her clothes spread wide/ And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up/ Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes/ As one incapable of her own distress." Millais painted the landscape of riverside plants and flowers in obsessive detail on the banks of the Hogsmill river in Surrey. He worked for up to 11 hours a day, six days a week and was threatened by the local farmer with prosecution for trampling across his field and destroying the hay. "My martyrdom is more trying than any I have hitherto experienced," he grumbled.

"The flies of Surrey are more muscular, and have a still greater propensity for probing human flesh." Even Millais recognised that he couldn't keep his model, Rosetti's lover Lizzie Siddall, lying in a cold river for more than 60 hours a week. Instead he persuaded her to lie, fully clothed in an old gown which he bought for £4, in a bath at his studio. He kept the water warm by lighting little oil lamps underneath it, but in one particularly gruelling session the lamps burned out, Siddall ended up lying in freezing water, and caught an appalling cold. Her father threatened to sue Millais for her medical bills – which allegedly came to £56,a sizeable sum in the mid-19th century. Although it has often been claimed that the chill was fatal, Siddall lived for another 10 years, and died from an overdose of laudanum. The critic John Ruskin liked the painting but not the fact that Millais had used a home counties brook, describing it as "that rascally wirefenced garden-rolled-nursery-maid's paradise". Three years later Ruskin's wife Effie Gray left him for Millais after the artist painted her portrait.

The Ruskins' unconsummated marriage was annulled and Gray married Millais. The couple had eight children. • This article was amended on 2 December 2014 to restore a reference to John Everett Millais in the first sentence. Elizabeth Siddal: The Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel | A R T L▼R K A R T L▼R K Home » Art » Elizabeth Siddal: The Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel February 11 Posted by ArtLark on February 11, 2016 in Art , Art History | 8 Comments On the 11th of February 1862, Elizabeth Siddal, an English artists’ model, died in London of a self-administered overdose of laudanum. In the early 1850s, as a young woman, Siddal was painted extensively by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

She sat for Walter Deverell’s Viola in Twelfth Night (1850), for William Holman Hunt’s British Girl in A Converted British Family Rescuing a Christian Priest from Persecution by the Druids (1851), for John Everett Millais’s Ophelia (1852) – for which she posed floating in a bathtub full of water, and for Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Beatrice, the Virgin Mary, St Catherine, and many others. Rossetti became eventually her husband, and even though Siddal did pursue her own artistic career under the financial patronage of John Ruskin, it was Rossetti who became the eventual medium to Siddal’s posthumous legendary status. In fact, “[in] her lifetime, she had virtually no public identity, and in the twenty years following her death there were few published references made to her. Only when her husband died in 1882 did her ‘own’ history begin.” (Jan Marsh, Imagining Elizabeth Siddal, History Workshop, No. 25, Spring, 1988).

Siddal, née Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, was born on the 25th of July 1829 to a working-class family. Passionate about poetry, Siddal had a whimsical aura about her, which, especially in the age of Romanticism, made her distinguished look very attractive to men. Her brother-in-law described her as “a most beautiful creature with an air between dignity and sweetness with something that exceeded modest self-respect and partook of disdainful reserve; tall, finely-formed with a lofty neck and regular yet somewhat uncommon features, greenish-blue unsparkling eyes, large perfect eyelids, brilliant complexion and a lavish heavy wealth of coppery golden hair.” (R ussell Ash, Dante Gabriel Rossetti ). In 1849, Siddal was spotted working in a milliner’s shop by Deverell, who then employed her to model for him. It was only a matter of time for Siddal to become the leading muse to the whole Pre-Raphaelite movement. However, each and every one of the painters used Siddal’s image in their own way, depriving her, as Griselda Pollock has claimed, of her own historical and artistic personality.

(Griselda Pollock, Woman as Sign in Pre-Raphaelite Literature: A Study in the Representation of Elizabeth Siddal, Art History, Vol. 7, no. 2, June 1984). “[T]he persona of Elizabeth Siddal has been represented over the years, like a soft clay pot constantly shaped and reshaped and filled with new meanings.” ( Jan Marsh, The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal ). In 1851, Siddal began sitting for Rossetti, who then developed some form of obsession for his model. The number of paintings he did of her oscillates around a few thousand. Rossetti and his muse got married in 1860, and Siddal, whose state of health had been fragile throughout her entire life, committed suicide in 1862. It was then that Rossetti’s obsession turned into insanity, as he became haunted by the ghost of love that had been often abused by him, when Siddal was still alive. Perversely, thanks to this obsession, Siddal’s image was being successively rehabilitated. The more time passed from her death, the stronger was her posthumous persona.

For example, after Siddal’s death, overcome with grief, Rossetti enclosed in his wife’s coffin the only copy of his poems. “Some years later, in response to persuasion, he was said to have reluctantly agreed to an exhumation to retrieve the verses, subsequently published in 1870. This macabre event, which still provokes an emotional response, successfully helped to establish Rossetti’s position as a noteworthy Romantic artist alongside Keats, Byron and Shelley, and with it, the dependent reputation of his beautiful lover. Her role was also posthumously enhanced through the reproduction of her likeness in Rossetti’s painting of Beata Beatrix , as Dante’s beloved Beatrice at the moment of her rapture into heaven…” (Marsh). Whilst during Rossetti’s lifetime Siddal was still being perceived more as an icon of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, after the painter’s death, public attention started slowly turning towards her artistic personality.

After a brief mention in Rossetti’s obituary, “[the] first full account of Elizabeth Siddal came from Hall Caine, whose Recollections of Rossetti (1882) disclosed that before marriage she had been her husband’s model and pupil, and described her as ‘a young lady of great personal beauty, in whom she discovered a natural genius for painting and a noticeable love of the higher poetic literature’. Also revealed was her drug addiction, when after marriage ‘the lady’s health began to fail’ and she resorted to laudanum to combat ‘neuralgia’; thereafter ‘her spirits drooped and her art was laid aside’.” (Marsh). It seems that the death of her lover and husband de-objectified Siddal and for the first time she became treated not as “a cipher for masculine creativity” (Pollock) but as an artist, and most of all – a woman.

Question: Lizzie Siddall was the model for the painting of the drowning of Ophelia by which Pre-Raphaelite?
Answer: JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS